Christopher Luxon is being praised for his "energiser bunny" first week officially leading New Zealand, with Josie Pagani saying he looks like an "assured" Prime Minister.
Pagani, a left-leaning political commentator and former Labour candidate, said Luxon had done OK despite the controversy surrounding his deputy Winston Peters' attacks on the media.
"I think he looked quite assured," Pagani said of Luxon, appearing on Newshub Nation's Christmas special. "I know that everybody's saying, 'What a disastrous beginning, it's been a mess, Winston's been behaving badly'… but I think he's done alright, and I think he's resisting the push from the media actually."
But Luxon's leadership aside, Pagani said the "bigger problem" was the contents of the coalition agreements between National, ACT and NZ First.
Pagani believed the agreements contained "a very weird mixture of very high-level stuff".
"I think it's going to be difficult; I don't think they yet know what kind of right party they are," she said. "Are they populists? Are they prudent managers of the status quo? Or are they libertarians getting rid of regulation?"
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